Morning Everyone
I haven't posted before on here but I'm looking for anyone who can relate and has had a similar experience to offer their support.
My Dad has cancer of the duodenium which was found accidentally (we were very lucky it was found) and we were informed that it is localised and could be removed via a whipple procedure with a course of chemo after. Dad is 70 with some complex previous medical conditions which put him in the higher risk category but he was deemed well enough for surgery. We were told that his stay in hospital could be from 1-3 months.
Unfortunately our experience hasn't been straight forward. The actual whipple procedure went very well, however he spent 2 weeks on the high dependency ward due to experiencing a chest infection, he also had issues with fluid leaking from the pancreas and there was some discussion over incision of a third drain however this was not required. He did then contract some sort of "bug" from one of the fluids in his drain and required treatment for this.
After two weeks he was stepped down to a ward however has experienced since then the following complications:
- Delayed stomach emptying so he is unable to eat and constantly vomiting with anything he has attempted to eat
- Fluid retention/fluid overload due to lack of mobility and his body not obsorbing protein therefore he is requiring oxygen and has severe oedema in legs and abdomen
- On two separate occasions he has had blood clots in one of his drains and a blood transfusion. There was some discussion around a CT scan and to possibly embolise the source for this, however the bleeding on both occasions stabilised so this has just been monitored
Dad's now just over 3 weeks post surgery, only transferring with assistance of two to the chair. He's on oxygen and the aim yesterday was to insert an NJ tube in his nose to feed him due to the delayed stomach emptying. Unfortunately this procedure was unsuccessful yesterday due to excessive food on my Dad's stomach so they are going to attempt this again in a weeks time when they have "pumped this food out".
Can anyone relate to this story? I'm conscious that other patients on my Dad's ward have made amazing recoveries and many stories I read online refer to an average of a 14 day stay and 3-4 stay on high dependency. At the moment Dad isn't improving day to day but with the amount of complications this does not surpirse me either as many days there has been an extra problem to add to the list. Dad did a lot of work prior to surgery working out to increase exercise tolerance and strength with weights. He also did a lot of work prior to surgery on a breathing device he was provided by Physio - he was a perfect patient who worked hard prior to surgery.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
